Nichefinder's Journal

Have you done any marketing analysis? Before you pick a niche, make sure it's a profitable one first. Every now and then, I'll come up with some great ideas. The niche might seem like a winner 3 o'clock in the morning, but until you do some analysis on your niche, don't get too hyped up for nothing. The other day, I was talking to a friend that has a business selling wine tanks. He just started it up less than 6 months ago and thought there was a highly profitable market for them. He's a wine maker himself and knows a lot of wine makers as well. Also, wine tanks are big ticket items. He sells premium tanks starting at a few thousand dollars. His actual profit is close to $500 for every tank sold. So, for a quick and dirty way to find out how much he could possibly make from selling wine tanks, let's take a look at Nichebot . I clicked on the Wordtracker option on the top menu and typed in "wine tanks". The top result was "polyethylene wi...

Here's a few links that have been really useful when looking for a domain name: Instant Domain Search Nameboy I usually just go to my domain name registrar and find a name by trial and error. After using both of these links above, they have saved me a lot of time. Instant Domain Search is the latest tool that I've been using. It dynamically searches for available names as you type the name. It will then provide you with a list of places to register your domain. Nameboy is pretty useful for looking up related domain names, or ones that rhyme with the primary and secondary names that you've typed in. Give them a try

I have to say congrats to super affiliate Kieron Donoghue. After reading his posts on Sitepoint , I realized that I should be focussing on pay-per-click (PPC) more than natural search. It's an idea that I first started to really impliment after reading Rosalind Gardner's book , but I was still pumping out a lot of content for natural search. I've been probably doing 80% SEO and 20% PPC. After reading his posts, I've decided to pump up my PPC ads. Here's a few quotes from Kieron: "Above is a picture taken of 1 of the 5 pages from my business bank statement that relates to late December 2005, early January 2006. Obviously I've used Photoshop to key out some banking reference codes. I've only posted a picture of 1 page instead of all 5 as I don't want to disclose exactly how much I earn in a month. (BTW the currency of my bank statement is £UK Pounds Sterling). As you can see the rough total on that 1 page alone is roughly £82,000 which works out a...

Yesterday, I ended up downgrading my Opera browser to the latest stable version (from the beta). I didn't think I would have any problems. When I upgraded, all of my cookies and saved passwords were retained. When I downgraded, I lost all of them. For close to a year, I've been relying on the built in password manager. After this experience, I'll never rely on the built in pw managers again. If you're into affiliate marketing, I'm sure you have tons of accounts. Besides CJ, Linkshare, and Clickbank, there's a bunch of companies that manage their own programs. So with that, they all have different passwords. Having to log onto each one is a major drag. I think it's nearly impossible to remember tons of passwords. I've tried to keep my keywords consistent over the last several years, but didn't have much luck. Companies had various requirements. Some would required only letters and numbers up to 6 characters, some more, some less, some requi...

I finally got my automatic responder (AKA autoresponder) for my sites a few weeks ago. I've seen numerous reviews from online marketers. I ended up reviewing 3 companies, and they happen to be the most popular ones in the industry. Usage:Autoresponders are used to automatically reply to requests (ie. newsletters subscriptions, forums messages, etc.) It took me a while to buy into the whole idea. In the past, I set up a simple PHP or cgi script in my websites, and sent the responses directly to my email. That was fine when I only had a few dozen subscribers. It later became a hassle as more people came on board. Another problem I faced was SPAM filters. The free email accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail sent my email directly to the bulk mail. I thought that I would be doomed forever. Another issue I faced was using scripted Autoresponders on a Windows web server(IIS). My hosting service did not allow SMTP (outgoing mail) access. I could understand that, especially with the hig...

Last week, I finally finished up Rosalind Gardner's book. At last...here's the " Super Affiliate Handbook Review :" For those of you not familiar with Rosalind, she's an ex-air traffic controller that jumped ship and created a website that earns over $435,000/yr selling other peoples stuff. Several months back, I was contemplating if I should purchase James Martell's book or Rosalind's . I searched the web and somebody mentioned that Rosalind's was more of an inspirational or motivational book, instead of instructional. That kind of turned me off. I've read and experienced so much hype from businesses online and offline, I just wanted pure info that I could use. So after reading several more reviews, I ended up getting James book. After buying James book, the lesson I learned from this was: make sure you're looking at current reviews. If I would have noticed all of the news on search engine algorithm changes, I would have come to a diffe...

"Search Engine Optimization" Important Update 3/10/06: Please read the "Old SEO" article. ***** In this section, I'll go over advanced site design strategies to help your traffic grow through the search engines. This is known as "search engine optimization." It's not as easy as it you to be. People use to stuff their pages with tons of keywords. Search engines would notice, and you would get plenty of traffic. Now, this is seen as web spam, and your site would get penalized. When making a page, ask yourself this question: "Would I be open to tell Google, Yahoo, or MSN about how I designed this page?" If you're using super sneaky tactics, you might be setting your site up for failure. So here's some basic SEO * Add a primary keyword in your title * Add a primary keyword in your headers. Use the html tag H1 for main titles, and H2 for subtitles. Don't just use bigger fonts. * Italicize or make relevant text bold. * Include...

I think it makes sense to test out affiliate marketing first before offering your own product or service online. Now if you have a cutting edge product, then by all means, market it first. My reasoning for using affiliate marketing first is that it requires barely any business effort. You don't have to get a business license. You don't have to carry inventory. You don't have to worry about employees (if you wish). It allows you to work anywhere in the world. It allows you to work on your own time schedule. You also don't have to worry much about customer service. From my past experiences, this is a big plus. So once you try out affiliate market, then you have a good idea of how you could market your own product. Think about it as a way to easily gain experience. Imagine if you started a company. You got a sales permit, or some other license. You did some research and product development. You hired a programmer or a company to make the product. You get a pate...

The first thing you want to do is create a plan for your website. Build Up Your Knowledge! Okay, so you've already done some research and picked out a good niche. So how are you going to create a site you know nothing about? The low cost approach is doing the research yourself. You don't have to go back to school for this. Check out online encyclopedias and related sites. Go to your local library and check out a few books on the niche. Make sure that the information you pick is valid and acceptable. Whether you're reviewing websites or books, look at online reviews to see how others perceive the info. If you've picked out a book that has a lot of bad reviews, what do you think people would say about a website based off of that book? Think about this whole process as an extended book report. Instead of talking about 1 book, you're combining all of the knowledge you've learned and reporting on it. Keyword Selection -- The Planning Stage After using Wordtra...

If you've chosen your domain name, you'll also need a place to store your information. This server space is what a web host is. What you'll want to do is find a cheap web hosting package . When I say "cheap," I don't mean low quality. There are so many places to get web hosting, that searching for an affordable one could be tough. Most of the big named companies offer tons of web hosting packages, but unfortunately are pretty expensive. I'm pretty surprised that Yahoo is still offering their starter package close to $12/mo, with a $25 startup fee. I guess it's the name that sells. Over the last decade, I've tried out several hosting companies. For over the past 2 years, I've chosen a service where I have 10 websites set up on. If you want to set up one website, you pay $1/mo. If you want to have 10 websites, it's $2.95/mo. They have a startup fee, but it's pretty small compared to the monthly savings. Before selecting the package...

What is a domain name? Simply, it's your web address. You'll have to do some domain name research before choosing one. You can't just pick any web address. You have to pick one that's available, and most important, related to your niche. You'll see many sites that don't have an address related to their niche. If you want to strongly focus on making a brand name (ie. like Google), you could pick a domain name that is totally different from your niche. So why do I recommend choosing a relevant domain name? Search engines will rank domain a little bit higher if you include your primary site keyword in the domain name. I don't want to go overboard on this. If you're working on a site on plasma widescreen televisions, I wouldn't create a web address like: www.plasma-televisions-for-sale.com; Although this is keyword rich, you don't want to make it look like web spam (which can lower your rankings). Simply include 1 or 2 keywords into the title...

In this guide, you'll discover how you can start up a business online for less than $50. Whether you want to start up a small one or large one is up to you! Using the technology of computers and the internet, you can even run a massive worldwide business without having any employees or inventory if you wanted to. ...so let's get started In the past, brochure-like websites were the main style of business websites. As time went on, these websites seemed like a standard template. Visitors would visit these business websites and find barely any value. Today, content is king. In order to create a profitable content based site, you need to create value. When people search around the internet, the main thing they search for is information. ..and to make the experience more enhanced, people are looking for "relevant" information that contains value. If you're in a competitive business, what are you offering of value? Why would a person go to your website and choose ...